View from building B
Come January, visitors to the World Market Center will be able to enjoy a panoramic view of the Las Vegas skyline from a VIP lounge and restaurant atop the 1.6 million-square-foot second building.
WMC Co-founders and Managing Partners Jack Kashani and Shawn Samson are giving an early look inside Building B and new details about the growing market today during a “view-from-the-top” press tour.
Among the details from the tour and in an earlier interview with Furniture|Today: WMC has secured $345 million in permanent financing for the second building; some of the features and space planned for later stages of the 12 million-square-foot, eight-building project will be moved up to earlier phases; a large parking structure is planned; and the value of the overall project has grown to $3 billion from the previous estimate of $2 billion.
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While overlooking downtown and the Las Vegas Strip from the 16th floor of Building B on Monday, Samson said he believes that, at 378 feet, this second building will be the tallest of any industry market center.
“It’s a very high point,” he said.
Work on the facility, fully leased with nearly 300 exhibitors, is ahead of schedule and will be ready for the Jan. 29-Feb. 2 market. Tenants will start moving in and making their own improvements in October.
From the span of windows along the top floor, visitors will see the Strip to the south, downtown to the east, Nellis Air Force Base to the north and Red Rock and Mount Charleston to the west.
Work on the third 15-level, 2.1 million-square-foot building will begin in late September and be ready for the July 2008 market. By then, the first phase of a 7,200-space, 15-level parking structure will be open, starting with eight levels and 3,700 parking spaces.
The first three market buildings will give the WMC 5 million square feet of permanent space at a cost of more than $1 billion.
“We’re adding many new features, both architecture and amenities,” Samson said. He said the features, including seminar rooms and a large restaurant with an indoor-outdoor space, are based on the demands of exhibitors and dealers.
About 20,000 square feet on the top floor of Building B is dedicated to a VIP lounge, a seminar room, and a ballroom and outdoor patio area that make up a large restaurant expected to be open during market and open to the public during non-market times.
Also on the top floor will be a new Western Home Furnishings Assn./National Home Furnishings Assn. Retailer Resource Center with its own seminar room, a media center and an international buyers lounge. Samson said 20% of the WMC’s 1,500 exhibitors now come from outside the United States.
Much of the 133,000-square-foot top floor is devoted to the mechanical equipment and other guts of the building while the lower levels will mainly house showrooms.
The first two levels of the new building will feature a year-round design center. Home accents will be on the next three floors, and furniture and bedding will take floors six through 15. Sky bridges will connect the two structures on all Building A levels.
Separately, WMC’s temporary venue, now in the Las Vegas Convention Center, will move in January to the 200,000-square-foot Cashman Center, said WMC Director of Marketing Dana Pretner. She said the event can grow to 400,000 square feet through Pavilions-like tents if necessary. Cashman is downtown and about a five-minute drive from WMC.
Just how much temporary space will be needed is unclear, she said, noting that many current Pavilions exhibitors will move into the second building. The WMC will continue to have 350,000 square feet of Pavilions tents on site, incubating the next permanent exhibitors of the complex.
